Forbidden Flight

The days are growing shorter, the nights longer and lonelier--more hours without the fellowship of birdsong. The warmth of another summer dwindles, and again a jittery passion charges me throughout. Vibrating through my body, this energy has me beating my winds and testing the limits of my home. Above me, the sun flees and goes about its passage oblivious to my struggles.

To chase down its kindness and fruits, to join with others and become of singular purpose again. To do what I have never done, to rise and soar. To be buffeted along, the trade winds carrying me further than I have ever been. Further, then I could ever imagine beyond this gilded limit. I hop and skip along my perch, hovering and calling out to the gathered birds. 

"What plans do you have? To what lands do you head?" 

They seldom answer, but when they do, their words are fragmented and foreign. Their strange song sounds clipped, their chirps and chortles exotic. I listen and press myself against the bars, to strain and catch their meaning. 

"Far from here. Wide-open. Not this. Come." 

Images, unformed and awash with emotion, flutter in my mind a riot of colour and joy. Painted in my mind by inexperienced hands.

"Oh, I'd love to. Next year maybe?" I chirp back nonchalant. 

"Come. Be bird. Come," they call. 

They startle and rise. Swirl and settle. And wait for my reply. 

"I cannot," I sing back at last. I turn and flutter to the back a little way away from the open window.

They rise and leave. None look back.

Oh, I do have some comforts for the long and lonely evenings. Food is not hard to find, the nights are never cold, and a bird that looks so much like me visits fleetingly. 

So shy, though, he or she never stays for a shared meal or a quiet drink. But still, I must admit, it is exciting when they drop by unannounced at my home. 

I am happy to have enough to share, even if they don't stay for a quick peck. 

There are many things in my life to be grateful for. Many many things.

When the trees outside grow quiet when no one comes close to my window to visit, on those days I wonder. My mind drifts up and up on the powerful winds that must be braver cousins to the breezes that come in through my curtains. 

They lift me higher and higher, through space and open-air, room enough to swirl and dive and roll. The cool air on my feathers, the warm distant sun on my beak, the orange glow in my eyes. The climbing cool, the vanishing heat on high, kept at bay by the sturdy true beat beat beat of my wings. 

Wings that stretch and strengthen, accomplish more in a moment than they've been free to do my whole life yet. I wonder of birds that look different, that follow different headings, of the stories they'd share on the winds. Of the places they've seen, the strange and beautiful lands, beyond Baker Street and Main. 

Oh, the colours they must have seen, beyond brick and mortar, shadowed green and even these muted autumn shades. The bright flash of light on rivers and lake, the shifting colours of land below. The sunrises and sunsets unencumbered by these hunched and clustered mountains so square. 

Oh, I wonder yet of broad, beautiful blue skies, and wet white wispy clouds, even the passing fancy of fresh and fleeting fogs, afloat with boats, barges and shifting ships jostling side by side on the water's edge. Daring and diving, dipping and darting through the river traffic, following the swirling dark grey waters to the endless deep blue sea. 

Oh, how I wonder and while away the long and lonely days, the empty trees and the closed window. The chill and drafts have been sealed away, so to the smells and the cawing of the crows and the rapacious ravens pecking at their evening meal. Welcome safety at least. 

This winter is different. I dread the deeper longer nights, the days that come are thin and shallow. Their light mean and meagre. Through it all I sleep less; I cannot find solace like I once did. I spend many a night awake on my perch. Standing sentinel through the night, looking out for I know not what. Nothing comes, no one speaks, but I cannot sleep—the Movement of the flock calling to me. But, I cannot answer, I cannot follow. 

The morning comes, and I am bone-weary—no song to sing today, no energy to eat. Without the sun to warm my heart, I wonder not where I could go, but where I will be tomorrow. The grey, the dreary climate has infected me and brought me low. Years past I'd been able to batter through because Spring was coming, another Summer just behind it and a tantalizing Fall to leap into flight. But this year is different. 

This year my wings are bent and broken, shaped by this confinement. They cannot stretch and flex; they cannot lift me and carry me the scant few beats the to the roof of my cage. I cannot hover in place, and for the two illusory moments feel a cheap facsimile of flight. 

Although my mind wanders still, my heart stagnates deeper. Days pass where I don't look beyond the misty curtains to the world outside. I don't listen for the faint chirps of a new voice, a stranger fresh with stories of faraway streets, or if fortune favours me beyond measure faraway unseeable lands.

My final day began like any other. 

I sat perched. Clinging with fading strength on the cold metal rod that speared through the middle of my tiny home. I hungered so. But the mere seed, my seedbox overflowing, did not fill the void in my guts. My thirst clawed against my throat, choking the song from my beak. 

I stood to watch, waiting, waiting, waiting.

And then in answer, I saw the first faint white blossom on my bare-branched tree outside. A beautiful promise extended towards me.

Spring was here! 

A new year, perhaps my neighbours would return from their travels. 

Perhaps they would share their adventures, their stories. 

Perhaps. 

My heart beat so powerfully at that hope.

Painfully.

And then - 

It skipped. 

It stuttered.

And I slipped. 

I fell. 

I saw a roof above me, not the window anymore. 

A cage within a cave. 

A curtain drew across my sight.

The bright day grows dark. 

Oh, how I wished I heard just one more story.